Yes, so... I'm theoretically working on something for my Environmental Politics class right now. Actually, I am working on it, but failing to understand it. It's hopeless, I tell you. I do not, can not, understand the nuances of international politics. I continue to try, and I continue to fail. There's my secret, though it's not much of a ( Read more... )

So. Yesterday. Sunday. A very good day, if I do say so myself. I headed out to Shibuya on my own in the early afternoon to study in some random coffee shop, hoping Tomoko would answer my e-mail at some point and come to join me. Alas, she never did; she was, as she put it today, "disowning her phone" all day yesterday. No problem. I had a ( Read more... )

I've often noted, at least among my international student friends here in Japan, that I find it extremely hard making friends with "normal" Japanese people. By "normal" I mean that I find it hard to get along with Japanese people who unquestioningly believe that they are completely, culturally, essentially Japanese. The Japanese people I get ( Read more... )

Okay, so... which one of you beautiful, creative, generous Portlanders is going to teach me how to sew this summer? Seriously, if any of you can teach me, and would enjoy hanging out with me for those periods of time (don't worry, I'm fun), learning to sew is one of my major goals this summer. I want to get creative, and learn to use my hands, ( Read more... )

The greater the extent to which one has lived and participated in a genuinely foreign culture and understood it, the greater the extent to which one realizes that one could not, without violence to one's personal integrity, be of it. --Laura Bohannon
It started like this: my host mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table together after dinner, ( Read more... )

There comes a time in every college student's life when one has so damn much work to do, and so little time to do it, that one has no choice but to give one's homework the finger and do something else entirely. Therefore, rather than reading the literally hundreds of pages in scholarship on Japanese women that my anthro professor has assigned me; ( Read more... )

Some people like to talk a lot
Including you
You know there's not a whole lot I have to say
I would rather just shut up and do
And I'm going to miss you when you're gone
Yeah, I'm gonna be torn
Just remember that I love you
Just remember: you were warned.--Ani DiFranco, "Outta Me, Onto You ( Read more... )

Come on, people. Someone had to ask the question:

1. The Russian pop duo t.A.T.u. Your thoughts?

a)Ta-who?
b)Ohmygod, t.A.T.u. is, like, the best band ever!!! I love their music, it is so kewl!!!! Julia and Lena are the sweetest couple in the entire world, and they're going to be together 4-EVER. <3<3<3 ( Read more... )

I wrote a deeper entry earlier; it got erased. Until I gather the energy to write something similar again, be satisfied with these random thoughts:

*The weekend before last, I played FFX-2. You are all jealous.

*My new favorite Japanese expression is kingyo no fun. My new host mother taught it to me; it means someone who won't stop following ( Read more... )

Well, nami13 didn't rape me. Everything we did together was completely consensual ( Read more... )